Monday, September 29, 2008

Getting Closer To The Basement

"How many steps must we take down the basement stairs before we realize we are going to end up in the basement?" - Fred Marshall Jr.

All yesterday I heard about a "bipartisan effort" in Congress though it was, in effect, a single party operation, with only a handful of traitors permitted from the opposition party. All day today I've heard about those nasty Republicans and Democrats (finger pointing).

There are free market solutions ladies and gentlemen, that will let the market sort things out by punishing the irresponsible and not punishing the producers and risk-takers. The worst solutions are government takeover and socialization of the marketplace the administration is proposing and the Congressional majority is pushing.

If this bailout occurs, to any degree, then we may as well live in U.S.S.R., because we shall surely live in United Socialist States of America.

Keep in mind - - and I know memories are short - - what happened with the S & L bailout....they initially said it would cost $10 billion, then a couple of weeks later they said it might reach $25 billion, and the final tally was closer to $500 billion. Can you imagine how that dynamic would work with an initial estimate of $700 billion? What is 50 times $700 billion? $35 TRILLION? Pretty soon we're going to be talking about some real money here. Hell, with $700 billion, they could give $425,000 to every citizen in the United States age 18 and older. Reckon some of them might then pay off their mortgages and solve the problem? No, that won't work because people working in everyday jobs in the service sector would quit their jobs on the spot, and the economy would surely collapse.

What these people are proposing is not taking money from the taxpayer and giving it to the banking industry, no, they propose to create $700 billion out of thin air and give it to the bankers to pump into the economy. Then very soon a loaf of bread will cost $5 and a gallon of gasoline will cost $9. That wouldn't be so bad for someone earning $2,000 a week, but let me see a show of hands of all who are earning that much. That's what I thought, not many.

All that worthless currency will flood the market, prices in dollars will rise to the point where people can't carry enough cash on their persons to get through a normal day, and that makes progress towards the cashless society they seek, in which all transactions must be executed electronically and the bankers and the government know how and where every dime is spent (dimes will soon replace the pennies). I saw it in the late 1950s in France, when a briefcase full of paper French francs was worth about 50 U.S. dollars. It took ten minutes to count out enough money to buy a pack of chewing gum.

In the end, a huge chunk of mortgaged real estate will wind up in the hands of the banks and they will have gotten this huge windfall of free money AND they will have a lot of our foreclosed property as well. In the end, the money WILL come from the PEOPLE, and it will all go to the BANKSTERS along with the millions of acres of real estate they will then own.

I still maintain that 88% of Americans are functionally stupid. They don't know squat and most of them don't want to know. I listened today on C-SPAN to Obama speaking in Colorado and was amazed at how so many people could so stupidly cheer such unmitigated bullshit spewing out of his mouth. I hear similar crap coming out of McCain's mouth. With four candidates on the two tickets, not a single one has a prayer at being a competent president yet, for the first time in memory, both VP candidates are more competent than the heads of their tickets.

Meanwhile, the federal government grows, Homeland Security grows, FEMA grows, all dangerously. This country hasn't a prayer in avoiding being transformed to a Socialist society. Like Germans in the 1930s, only a very few saw it coming.

Politicians put us in this position, Democrats and Republicans alike. In the 90s the Congress and the Executive Branch forced lenders to make loans to borrowers who were not creditworthy but who were identified by the Presidential administration as "needing" homes (what was "needed" was Democratic votes for his re-election). Janet Reno threatened heavy federal fines for lending institutions which rejected loan applications from such people....minorities, underprivileged, etc.

The bad loans that were made continued well into this current administration, with its continued encouragement. The solution is to let the institutions which made the bad loans fail, and allow the borrowers who bought homes they could not afford to go into foreclosure. The market will sort all that out on its own.

One member of Congress described the proposed bailout bill as a "mud sandwich." He was 100% correct in that regard.~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1) Publication of "Mein Kampf" and publication of "Project For a New American Century"2) Reign of the 3rd Reich and reign of the 43rd U.S. Presidential Administration3) Hitler's burning of his own parliament, and the U.S. Government's 9-11 attack on its own people4) Austria (Anschluss)-Czechoslovakia (Munich Agreement)-Poland/Afghanistan-Iraq-Iran5) Passage of Hitler's Enabling Act and passage of the nearly identical U.S.S.A. Patriot Act6) Operations of Hitler's Gestapo and operations of U.S.S.A.'s Blackwater7) Bankruptcy of Germany's Weimar Republic and U.S.S.A.'s taxpayer bailout of Federal Reserve interests

Lace your fingers behind your neck, place your head between your knees, and prepare for a crash landing.